


it's a hard day for breathing again

by fuckedupisperfect



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckedupisperfect/pseuds/fuckedupisperfect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tina is a quiet girl.</p><p>(Fill for a prompt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a hard day for breathing again

_The paint's peeling off the streets again_

_And I'll drive and close my eyes in Michigan_

_And I feel nothing, not brave_

_It's a hard day for breathing again_

 

She was always the quiet girl.

 

It didn't matter if she sat at the front of the room or wilted in the back, or sat alone at lunch or stayed in bathroom stall waiting for the period to be over, desperately trying to ignore the sounds of other girls giggling and having conversations at the sinks like it's normal to want to talk to other people and share feelings and be included in a group.

 

Tina noticed other people like her, people who drifted to the background or looked at the floor when walking through the halls, afraid to make eye contact. They didn't usually have people to be around with, either. 

 

Then there were people who weren't like her, boisterous and flashy, standing out and not afraid to speak their minds. 

 

There was a girl with long, dark hair who boasted about being in every single club, and had even tried to get Tina to help her make an Asian Club. She introduced herself as Rachel Berry with a huge grin and with hands clasped together. Tina was thankful she didn't go for a handshake, it was just less confrontational that way. There was a small burst of hope in Tina, but it didn't go over very well, especially when Tina turned around and quickly walked away before Rachel could start talking about making rice balls or whatever she thought being Asian meant. She lost that opportunity to make a friend, but she was loud and Tina was quiet.

 

But even if she was different (no,  _especially_ because she was different), she didn't have any friends, either. 

 

Sometimes she noticed Rachel going from group to group, talking to them as if she belonged but by looking at the faces of those people, she could tell they didn't really want her around them, or at least didn't know what she was doing by talking to them.

 

Rachel stopped trying to talk to her.

 

It didn't matter because Tina didn't think she was anyone at all. Of course no one would talk to her if she felt invisible. If she felt invisible of course she wouldn't make an effort to talk to people. (It had been a long time since she felt like she could disappear by just closing her eyes, but there she was - in the middle of a cafeteria and no one would look at her.) But it still hurt when she didn't have a partner for a project and sat still in her seat while everyone else bubbled in excitement when the teacher decided to let everyone choose their groups. She could be bubbly if she had someone to be bubbly with, she could. She sometimes stuttered but she could still talk when she wanted to. It hurt when she didn't.

 

It hurt when she had to stand in front of class and speak. And it hurt when a few girls in cheerleading uniforms would walk up to her and say, "Hey, do you want to be my friend?" and when she would just gape in shock (or terror), not knowing what to say to that, they'd laugh and walk away.

 

It was that malice that drove her to her own insides. 

 

It started with the music. Music could help her come out of her pit of longing. She began listening to anything that would cheer her up while dressing in things that would make other people think she was depressed. If she was happy inside but unhappy outside, that would make people stay away from her and not make her want to rip out her hair when they made her feel terrible inside and out. She put time into making her hair presentable to keep herself from tearing it out - she probably rinsed and lathered more times than once in her daily showers when she felt like herself, no inhibitions - and when she was slushied for the first time, she decided to streak her hair blue on a whim. 

 

Only she gets to decide what to put in her hair, thank you very much.

 

She started stuttering on accident. It was only meant to be a one time thing, to get out of doing a group presentation that she didn't have a group for. Her teacher let her write a paper and turn it in before presentations instead. 

 

But for some reason, that still didn't make her feel good.

 

After a really bad day of school (someone put packets of ketchup on her usual seat in History), she went home and dashed straight to the shower. It was in the shower with her peppy J-Pop music turned all the way up when she slipped on the wet floor of the tub and her razor cut a slit on the inside of her thigh. She looked down with wide eyes as a sliver of red drifted to the drain. She stopped the water and placed one hand over the cut to stop the bleeding while using the other to reach around the shower curtain to grab a towel. She slipped and dragged the entire curtain down with her.

 

There, on the floor of the tub, with the overwhelming sounds of her music and the water dripping from the faucet, she began to think she had a really, really bad day. 

 

She picked up her razor and stood up, scrambled out of the tub, and propped herself over the sink of her bathroom with her elbows, feeling more naked underneath her strips of bare skin than she ever felt before. She pressed the razor to her wrist.

 

But once she looked at the mirror and really looked at herself, she stopped. 

 

She wouldn't give them the satisfaction. 

 

Her blood is her own, thank you very much. No one else's. And she really needed to hurry up and get dressed if she still wanted to save her favorite skirt from an ominous death of ketchup stains.

 

* * *

 

As the days went by, she noticed Rachel drifting from groups less and less, and the bright aura that usually surrounded her dimmed. One time during lunch, a cheerleader started talking to Rachel, complimenting her outfit and making big gestures about - all to put a note on Rachel's back that said, "Whore". She invited Rachel to sit at her table. Tina watched Rachel go, the cheerleader's hand still on her back, as if leading her by the small of it like friends and significant others and decent people do. Tina didn't want to see what would happen next, so instead of stopping Rachel or ripping off the note or...doing something at all, she just sat at a table by herself, turned just so to make the cheerleader's table invisible to her line of sight (but she'd have to hear the inevitable laughter…  _That's what portable music is for_ ). She fixed her black shirt and patted down her skirt on the sides, careful not to brush against the cut on her thigh. 

 

She was about to stab a piece of lettuce with her fork when something bumped into her benchseat. She turned around to see a boy with glasses in a wheelchair looking up at her with a sheepish grin. "Sorry," he said. "I'm still getting used to maneuvering in this room. Food on the ground I have to dodge and stuff, you know."

 

"It's o-o-kay," she said. "A-at least you d-d-d-idn't bump into m-m-me because you didn't see me, though."

 

He breathed out a laugh and awkwardly looked around, then used one finger to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Is anyone sitting here?" he finally said after a moment of silence that seemed to last an eternity.

 

"N-n-no."  _It's now or never, Tina_. "Would  _you_  like to s-s-sit here?"

 

"Yeah, sure," he said. "I'm Artie, by the way. No one usually notices me either, unless they pretend to push me off the stairs."

 

"Hi. Tina. I mean, m-my n-n-name is Tina; I wasn't saying hi to you like y-y-you were T-tina, especially since you s-s-said your n-name is Artie..."

 

So, they ate lunch together; sometimes talking, sometimes not, all the while no one noticed her table had filled up a quota of more than one. She might have had it bad, but at least she wasn't Rachel Berry, because even when Rachel was happy on the outside and unhappy on the inside, she was never invisible.

**Author's Note:**

> originally prompted and filled last year, but this didn't come out like the prompt. title and lyrics from paint's peeling by rilo kiley.


End file.
